Kids' Night of Celebrating Cultures.

Tonight our three schooling offsprings had their end of year concert - Celebrating Cultures. Befitting to the theme, each class was to perform a play or song and dance exclusive to a particular country. In addition, they also prepared dishes of those countries for the parents and visitors to savour before the performance.

Let me start by saying that this year's is a bittersweet affair for me. It's Alyssa's first concert and Chloe's last before she moves on to Middle School (equivalent to lower Secondary in Malaysia). As such, I was determined to take as many and the best photos I can of that night. I think I might have earned the title Paparazzi-lla (photographer from hell)! I was all over the place - in my children's faces, hovering over teachers struggling to keep their students in line, trampling over children sitting on the floor, crouching on people's path and tripping children walking by. I bet there must have been some parent who's aching to throw a shoe at me to get me out of the way =)

The pre-schoolers started off by singing the school song and Australia's national anthem, Advanced Australia Fair. The kids were to wear clothes that symbolised Australia or the Australian culture, or other ethnicity background. Alyssa wore a cheongsam made of batik. This dress is actually Chloe's, a present from po-po. I was so pleased that she had something ready to wear and most of all, it suited the purpose: she being of Malaysian-Chinese heritage, cheongsam = Chinese traditional costume, batik = Malaysian national dress. 

Brandon's class theme was China. They celebrated the year of the Tiger by wearing tiger masks. The children played flute and sang the song Liang Ker Lou Xu (Two Little Mice). I'm thrilled that they chose that song because Brandon has been learning Mandarin and this song, so he sang it without a hitch.

Chloe did an Indian dance to the tune of A.R Rahman's Jai Ho! - theme song from Slumdog Millionaire. She was a bit self-conscious at the start of the dance, but she looks so beautiful with her long dark hair and bindi ;)

I took most of the pictures without flash, at ISO 3200 - colours were vivid and most importantly, no noise (not grainy). Oh, I'm so loving my 7D right now.

By the way, we did film their performances on video. Will post it on the blog once I work out how to do it.

Thanks for looking :)